Sometimes life confronts you in interesting ways. Last week my mother took a bad fall and knocked herself unconscious for a couple of hours. I did not find out about this until I was driving to work the next day because she did not bother to tell anyone when it happened. It turns out you can be as relaxed as you like about the reality of your parents aging, but still get rattled when you are sent a photo of your 86 year old mother looking like she has been beaten about the head with a cricket bat.
That led to a pretty long week, with each of my siblings and I taking turns spending time idling around various medical premises while the medical professionals generally stuffed up her initial treatment. It got sorted in the end and she is now on-track to heal up nicely.
But if that were not confronting enough, I discovered that not even a shared crisis will mend that most cliched of familial situations – an estrangement of siblings. No, my brother still would not speak to me after a fall-out earlier in the year. Worse still, I got a little insight into his feelings towards me that has me questioning my own character and behaviour. Oh well, I have always agreed with Socrates that an unexamined life is not worth living.
The thing is, I get hurt easily enough, but I am resilient. Nowadays there are better things in life to focus upon than endless self doubt and negativity. One of those is definitely my yoga classes.
You may recall in a much earlier blog that I told you how yoga saved my life. Now it is simply a way of life. I supplement my once a week individual lesson with the wonderful Jac with a couple of small, private classes with a group of friends at the Isaac.
To be honest, I would hesitate to call it a class, because we are more like a bunch of kids doing detention. At the ungodly hour of 6:30 am on a Tuesday morning, and the only slightly more civilised time of 7:30 am on a Saturday (WHEN ANY SENSIBLE PERSON WOULD BE HAVING A LIE IN!), we assemble before the resolute Bonnie and attempt yoga serenity.
On any given morning there are between 4 and 6 of us out of a total group of 8. None of us are young, but I am the oldest by a decade or so. The core group consists of myself (the elder), glamorous blond 1, the tall man, and the building manager. The slightly less frequent attendees are glamorous blond 2, the snorer, the artist and scowling cat face. Just so you know, the snorer and the artist, and glamorous blond 2 and the tall man, are each heterosexual couples. This can have a negative impact on the tone and behaviour of the class.
I have heard it said, and indeed Bonnie herself has said, that yoga is not a competitive sport. This is, as glamorous blond 1’s husband would say, “a load of shite”. Actually glamorous blond 1’s husband was initially part of the class, but wisely retired injured early on in the piece. Having recovered his health and fitness in an actual gym, he has declined to re-join our little band. I cannot think why.
In fact, our yoga group is nothing if not competitive. Partners try to out do partners, women to out do the men, men to out do the women, age versus beauty, you name it we compete. Me too. The great thing about yoga is that it finds you out. No matter how fit and limber you may be in some respects, your body will have weaknesses. Bonnie goes for every weakness she can find. Everyone of us has things we can do better than anyone else in the class, and things we can barely contemplate doing. Not one of us is without some significant underlying injury or 10. Sometimes we will be hanging onto a pose for dear life with muscles shaking and moaning out loud, but no one wants to be the first to release.
Bonnie likes to give us individual hands-on attention. That means when she spies someone really struggling she will come and make a little ‘adjustment’, or poke her thumbs into the taunt muscle to make it ‘release’. She talks a lot as she does this. The tall man has a habit of running off at the mouth while she does this. The more he talks the more she talks back, and the longer the rest of us hang in there in agony. Cries of, “keep counting” ring out around the room, but we all get punished for the one who has complained.
The truth is we all like to be distracted. The essence of yoga is to be deeply attuned to your body, to control your breathing, and to consciously let your muscles do their job. But we very frequently do not want to be attuned to our bodies. Bits of our bodies are frequently in agony. So the comments come loud and fast, and often raunchy enough for Bonnie to have made a 100 Me Too complaints by now.
Occasionally she will try to introduce some spiritual element into the class. For a while we had tibetan monks chanting in the background. That did not last long. She annoints us with essential oils at the beginning of the class to try and calm our minds. The men hate the lavender scent and will only respond to the more robust citrus. The time she accidentally gave us peppermint oil I stupidly rubbed it on my face – VERY invigorating but not calming. A few times she has attempted to send us off into some higher state of awareness with very mixed success. The one time she tried to secure our minds to the task by asking us to state aloud the moment we returned from any distracting reverie was somewhat sabotaged by the snorer yelling, “Back”, every 5 – 10 seconds as his wayward mind came and went.
We are not great at yoga, and we are terrible at its associated mental disciplines. To be honest we are all just waiting to hear the tell-tale snap of a tendon, but it has not happened yet. In fact we are slowly improving over time. Some mornings are dire. Some mornings are great. But we always feel better at the end.
That might be because our favourite part comes at the end. Bonnie arranges us all into a collapsed position on our mats, feet up on chairs or bean bags, cushions under heads. The building manager puts on his socks and is given a blanket. We don eye cushions to keep out the light. Then Bonnie talks us into a delicious zen-like calm for 5 minutes. After that all bets are off as we rapidly depart for work, or a date scone and coffee on Saturdays.
The point is, and there is a point to this, there is a lot be be gained from a persistent shared endeavour. It is very grounding to meet your friends with no make-up, hair undone, still groggy from bed and in lycra to boot. And then to try very hard, with utmost good humour, to improve oneself. We laugh at each other a lot, but with respect for what each is trying to achieve. Miraculously we are all getting stronger, more flexible, and generally fitter. But even more importantly, at least two mornings a week, we start the day feeling good about ourselves.